D&D 5E New Spellcasting Blocks for Monsters --- Why?!

[dave2008]

It is often by mistake. New DMs underestimate the amount of damage that can happen in a fight, and suddenly it is a TPK...

In my new Monday group, two weeks ago at level 1 we had a TPK. The DM had an "acid-zombie" (two were attacking us) explode when we defeated it, dealing 4d6 acid damage to everyone who failed a DC 12 DEX save (for half). He rolled 23 damage, and it ended up killing us all, even those who made their saves (but were previously injured).

Oh I agree with you if a DM is running their own stuff. I intended to qualify that I was talking about with published adventures mainly and secondarily if you are using the DMG encounter guidelines. The DMG encounter guidelines are not very deadly. However, as noted by other's in this thread, there are some monsters that are sneaky tough.

 

[Minigiant]

5e is "easy mode" because it is hard to keep ONE PC down.

But if your player's PCs yoyo up and down from death and you up the challenge, 5e is hard mode because it is easy to kill the Whole party.

 

[dave2008]

It is often by mistake. New DMs underestimate the amount of damage that can happen in a fight, and suddenly it is a TPK...

In my new Monday group, two weeks ago at level 1 we had a TPK. The DM had an "acid-zombie" (two were attacking us) explode when we defeated it, dealing 4d6 acid damage to everyone who failed a DC 12 DEX save (for half). He rolled 23 damage, and it ended up killing us all, even those who made their saves (but were previously injured).

I just did a quick check and if the DM just slapped on the "exploding acid" trait on to a CR 1/4 zombie that takes its attack CR from 1/4 up to 1. So he likely doubled the threat with that one change.

When your DPR is supposed to be in the 4-5 range, giving a monster an AoE attack that deals an average of 14 damage is not usually the best idea!

 

[dave2008]

5e is "easy mode" because it is hard to keep ONE PC down.

But if your player's PCs yoyo up and down from death and you up the challenge, 5e is hard mode because it is easy to kill the Whole party.

First, I don't agree it is easy modem that is just what I hear others say. However, I'm not following your argument, what does the yoyo have to do with. Now, full disclosure, we play death at 0 so there is no yoyo in our game. So this situation is not something I am familiar with.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Not really. You have a monster that is intelligent enough to use traps and terrain to their advantage, which means that they will invariably be deadlier than a monster who just engages in a slugfest--which, I would hazard to guess, is the way that a sizable percentage of DMs run their encounters. It doesn't matter if this is a pack of kobolds who uses traps and guerrilla warfare, or a dragon who stays in the air instead of sitting on the ground using a claw/claw/bite routine. With 5e's bounded accuracy, this is even more the case, since those kobolds could probably cause a lot of harm to even very high-leveled PCs. Could they kill them? Maybe, maybe not, but they can certainly cause a bigger resource drain than their CR would suggest.

Which makes calculating them according to the "6-8 medium encounters per adventuring day" rather pointless.

The only mechanical exploit I saw in Tucker's Kobolds was the way Fireball worked in 1e (expanding in all available space to full AoE). And frankly I think it should still work that way!

 

[Vaalingrade]

First, I don't agree it is easy mode, I was just comment about what others say. However, I'm not following your argument, what does the yoyo have to do with. Now, full disclosure, we play death at 0 so there is no yoyo in our game. So this situation is not something I am familiar with.

Because in-combat healing is less than the damage a single hit can deal, a character who was just healed from being downed is pretty much guaranteed to go down again on the next hit, requiring them to be healed inadequately again, creating a loop.

 

[dave2008]

Because in-combat healing is less than the damage a single hit can deal, a character who was just healed from being downed is pretty much guaranteed to go down again on the next hit, requiring them to be healed inadequately again, creating a loop.

How does that make a TPK more likely?

 

[Vaalingrade]

How does that make a TPK more likely?

Because overzealous DMs then think the loop means PCs are somehow 'too survivable' and adjust things to be more deadly. And if you start attacking the downed, weakening healing, killing PCs at 0, or even by fluke, down the healer, you're way more likely to TPK.

 

[J.Quondam]

There'd be no such "loop" if the PCs would just stay down, as the Fates intended.

 

[dave2008]

Because overzealous DMs then think the loop means PCs are somehow 'too survivable' and adjust things to be more deadly. And if you start attacking the downed, weakening healing, killing PCs at 0, or even by fluke, down the healer, you're way more likely to TPK.

So how is that a problem with the encounter guidelines? That seems to be entirely a DM issue to me.